Cannabis Blog

BOSTON — When it comes to understanding marijuana policy and its potential implications for Massachusetts, some senators are willing to go a mile high for their work.

The Special Senate Committee on Marijuana, led by Winchester Democrat Sen. Jason Lewis, plans to travel to Colorado in January when they will spend a week exploring how that state regulates and controls the legal recreational use of marijuana.

Four states and the District of Columbia have legalized the recreational use of marijuana. Proponents behind a ballot question to legalize pot in Massachusetts appeared Wednesday to clear the first major signature hurdle to put the question before voters in 2016.

Senate President Stanley Rosenberg said during an interview on Boston Public Radio on Wednesday that Lewis’ committee, which now has 10 members, would be taking a “field trip to Colorado” to study the public policy impacts of legalizing the recreational use of the drug.

For months, the task force had been a committee of one, but Rosenberg said that once it became clear petitioners were likely to be successful in gathering enough signatures to put the question on the ballot next November more senators stepped up to participate and help with research.

Washington State has one of the oldest medical marijuana laws in the country, and one of the oldest medical marijuana industries in the country as well. However, the medical marijuana industry has operated in a legal grey area for quite sometime, and after the passage of Senate Bill 5052, the industry has started to undergo dramatic changes. A lot of medical marijuana dispensaries will be forced to close, while others will be able to get licenses to continue to operate. Also, recreational marijuana stores will be able to get licenses and begin to sell to patients.

Statistics were released this week which showed that over 1,000 applications have been received for new licenses, and 142 already-licensed stores received ‘medical endorsements’ to begin selling to patients after the rules have been finalized and sales begin to be allowed. Per The News Tribune:

State government has in recent weeks stamped 142 retail marijuana licenses with a medical endorsement that will let them cater to patients come July1.

The value of an endorsement for the roughly 65 percent of pot shops that have received one won’t be fully known, though, until more rules are set for Washington’s newly consolidated medical and recreational marijuana system.

Head of the DEA in Beaumont, Texas, Bill Furay has been a prominent figure in busting drug cartels along the Mexican/American border for over five years. However, this time the newspaper headline for the latest drug arrest was his daughter – irony enough to make a complete embarrassment of the DEA once again.

It does pluck a curiosity to wonder what Furay´s opinion of the war on drugs is now, with his daughter on the receiving end of three drug felony sentences. The man who has been putting people in jail for trafficking drugs is now watching his daughter be put away for the same crime.

Well, she walks almost on the same path as her father. Although she has not been putting drug dealers away, she has been on the flipside of the coin as a drug dealer for quite some time. She sold drugs including LSD, cocaine, speed and marijuana.